"Donkerbroek: Tsjusterboksem, 1998–2026". Group exhibition, SIGN, Groningen. 2026.
Tsjusterboksem, 1998-2026
“Tsjerkedoopt en bibelberne. Fan it hûsrút ôf seach ik nei har toer, en stie der wat altyd al wie. Sneinske pipermunt en soere kofje. Pake syn reade peugot.”This project started with a frustration which haunted me throughout my practice:
What’s next?
What’s next when a sculpture is finished, what’s next when the sculpture finds its place, what’s next when it receives the “completed” stamp? This cannot be art, it has lost everything it once had.
All the expression, all the sensations of material, all the interpretations where cut short and could only briefly be found within new contexts. Then, a desire of destruction came along, and I found my answer in what I initially imagined to be the end.
The sculpture became alive again, it gained movement that went beyond depiction only. Autonomy was given and it became detached from the chains of living in the moment only. Neither did its place inside the environment cease to be, but rather, it became part of it.
I wanted to place the church of Donkerbroek through the same process. This church had loomed silently throughout my youth. Every Donkerbroeker knows of it, remembers it, and considers it there.
But what do we consider?
The notion of God? The labour of workers long forgotten? The skyline that makes for a pretty picture? Or perhaps the fact that we have always been connected to the broader world beyond our secluded little town?
Perhaps it is all of these things at once. Layered together, simple yet complex, and so familiar that we no longer question what it means to be there.
Perhaps we are like the sculptures.
Perhaps, in order to remain alive, we have to embrace the change that is about to come.